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My Dashboard - Sales vs Inventory Report...need advise

SeanDamnit

New Member
Hey Kids,

A co-worker of mine suggested I share my dashboard with this group - as this may be useful to some members, and I'm hoping to get feedback on the effectiveness of the way I present the data.

Dashboard can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x41pvp7kr6jkp1g/Equipment Aged Inventory Report - 09262013.xlsm

Yes it has macros. No it probably doesn't contain viruses. I always recommend scanning documents from strange internet-folk ;).

Some Background:
My position at my company is inventory fullfillment - we sell cell phones at a retail level. It is my job to determine how much stock our stores have, and decide whether or not I need to invest in more when comparing their sales relative to their current inventory.
This report takes our sales history - at the Store/SKU level - and compares it to current inventory on hand to determine our Days of Stock (or days until we run out of stock at current sales pace). This of course influences my ordering.

The report is split in two pivot tables - left breaks the data down by REGION/DISTRICT/STORE/SKU, the right breaks down by PRODUCT CATEGORY/SKU/LOCATION...it's the same data, however. (note that CATEGORY is something defined by the cell phone provider we work for. Required is inventory we MUST have in stock, Recommended, Clearance, and Demo (filtered by default) are exactly what they sound like).

To further assist me in getting the full understanding of sales trends, I added a simple line graph in the upper right showing daily sales volume (Blue) and a 7 day rolling average (red). This graph changes depending on what you are selecting in the pivot - select any particular product to see it's company-wide sales. Drop that product down to the Store level in the pivot to see sales for that particular product at that particular store. Continue to drop lower to get more specific info. Click the graph to expand/collapse. This is heavily influenced by dynamic reporting guides I found on this site.

That graph is where I feel I need the most help - is this the best way to present this data to THE POWERS THAT BE, and to local retail management who need to understand why I either am ordering, or am not ordering specific product?

A quick note on the Days of Stock calculation - normally this is calculated very simply - (Inventory on Hand / Average Daily Sales This Period = Days of Stock). However sometimes a product is brand new and only was physically received partway through the report period. In this case I trend out the sales for the sake of the denominator, using a process to determine the date of the first instance of inventory for that particular SKU at that particular location, and using an accelerated sales pace to get a more accurate Days of Stock number.

This report is generated in it's entirety with 1 click via a VBA and a SQL download of our databases raw sales and inventory data. I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER AND NEVER TAKEN ANY CODING CLASS! So I'm sorry if the coding you see isn't up to par with a pro...I have no formal training, just a Google search bar and an inherent laziness that drives me to make things easier.
 
Hi Sean ,

My comments are based on first impressions , and may be unjustified !

1. Is it a dashboard or a report ? A dashboard is meant to be viewed on a screen , whereas a report is on paper ; if it is sized for paper , then the smallness of the print and the chart may be justified ; if it is really a dashboard , then I think you should make more and better use of the screen , especially in today's age of 19" monitors.

2. The data may make a lot of sense to insiders , but the chart did not give me any understanding , especially since it is not labelled ; when I open the file , and I see the report titled "Equipment Aging Report" , and then the chart shows 376.87 per day , I am not able to understand anything ; it was only later , after going through the macros that I understood that the value would change based on the selection in columns B and G ; it would be nice if you could move the chart so that it occupies a greater part of the screen , and the items in columns B and G which are adding interactivity to the chart are repeated beside the chart so that it is clear that scrolling through the items will reflect in the chart.

3. My ideas of a dashboard are that the dashboard should have at least 4 or 5 objectives which need to be presented ; just one or two can be presented on one chart. So the first step in preparing a dashboard is to list out your objectives , what is it that you wish to project or present ?

Chandoo has a series on dashboard preparation here , which you might find helpful :

http://chandoo.org/wp/excel-dashboards/

Narayan
 
So.....really cool gag with the chart. Awesome that it plays nice with the entire pivot table. That's a great trick.

But if you spent the time setting that up, I'd think the chart itself deserves some more love. Off the top of my head:
1. Kill gridlines. (Seriously, make them go away)
2. Let's try some different use of color. For example, the 'lead story' is the sales. The reference is the average. So maybe think about a sharp color for the sales line and something a little more muted for the average.
3. While we're at it, go ahead and increase the line width for each series.
4. Nobody is reading all those dates. Use first, last, middle dates as appropriate. I think the last time I encountered something like this I used the first day of each week or something.

For what it's worth, I'm not a huge fan of using dueling lines. With sales of peas vs sales of carrots I think it's ok, but because this one is an actual the other is a trend, maybe this is an opportunity for a line/bar combo? It's not really a show stopper or anything, but generally with something like this I'd try to imply there's the difference at a glance. Same principles apply: kill the gridlines, use color, make efficient use of the chart space.

What other questions do you get from THE POWERS THAT BE (they get to be in caps) and your sales managers? If I'm understanding your role here, and I were them, I'd be asking----"What are our top X sellers and what are you doing about it?" and "What are our bottom X sellers and what are you doing about?" It's probably not bad to just answer those questions up front. It may also be interesting or useful to your audience to expose your order thresholds.
 
HELLO @SeanDamnit
I clicked on the link of dropbox that u provided, but it is not working.
please share your inventory report/dashboard.
@dan_l If you hvae the sample report, plz upload. I am a mba student, it will help me to understand the report
 
Also I am looking for a format in excel for creating inventory dashboard with KPI like inventory turnover, day sales, return on working capital etc. please help.
 
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